Phantom notes, twisted wood and other joys of looking after pipe organs

"A pipe organ is the king of instruments and it's one of those things that has always has inspired men to greater things" says John.

Now living in Yarloop, John looks like he's never going to retire.

He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of these unusual instruments. Having maintained the organ at St Mary's Cathedral for many years, as well as Winthrop Hall and St George's cathedral, he's now happily building his own concert organ out of 'junk' left over from a career that began as an apprentice in 1958 with Paul Hufner.

"I was originally going to be a printer" he says. "I was interested in the organ and started to learn it and one thing lead to another."

It was a six year apprenticeship because there are so many trades to be learned.

"Cabinet work, leather work, metal work, electrical work. Then you need to have some idea of architecture and engineering to hold all of these things together."

There are broadly two kinds of organ; the classical organ of Bach and the Edwardian or romantic organ.

What sets an organ apart from the piano is that it is driven by air. "Technically, first and foremost, it's a musical instrument. It's also a machine."

A life of music

When John restored the St Mary's organ in 1963, it was enlarged from two keyboards to three and many pipes were added, bringing it into line with the French classical vogue.

Many more stops were added and the instrument made "an even more exciting organ".

Brought up in the symphonic style, he recognised the need to expand his knowledge and in 1969 travelled to England and Holland for further training.

"I was treated to the great classical organs," he recalls. "The great Bach works and the great masses were composed on those organs."

Modern romantic organs include "lots of violins and flutes and imitative reeds and orchestral reeds.

"The action is an electric action and, of all things, controlled by a computer," says John, before laughingly adding, "which I don't like very much."

Looking after an organ

Organs, says John, "are living. You get some good ones and bad ones."

He has been associated with organs at Guildford Grammar, Geraldton's St Francis Xavier, Winthrop Hall, Christchurch Grammar, St Andrews and the Wesley church in Perth.

Tuning an organ like St Mary's with its 3,500 pipes can take two days. As the temperature increases, the flue pipes, the whistles, become sharper in pitch.

Mechanics need to be checked every month or so. "With St Mary's, it got a bit tricky towards the end as the leather work used in '62 wasn't of the highest quality and thirty years later, it starts to perish."

"The later organs are built to allow actions to come and go with the weather. Damp, or timber twisting, can be a real pain."

"Nothing," laughs John when asked what can be done with twisted wood. "Sometimes if it's really bad, you're obliged to take the pipes out and get into the chest and fix the timber strips that are twisted.

Modern materials are not so affected by the weather."

The worst problem for organ builders are cyphers, those unwanted notes. Cyphers are the bane of organist and maker alike. "You're not playing a note and a note will sound.

"Most unwelcome," says John in the driest possible tone.

"It often happened in most embarrassing moments," he chuckles, such as the first concert played on the newly rebuilt St George's cathedral organ. Almost every note was wrong.

"You won't believe this. It was simply a blown fuse. The electric action runs at 12 volts. If you cut off a fuse, the electricity will go to ground any which way it can.

"In this case, it was through the electric action magnets."

Build your own

John is currently working on the organ that originally was housed at Guildford Grammar and which is 100 years old this year. Its home now is in the catholic church at Willagee.

He's also working on his own pet project. "A bit of this and a bit of that," is how he describes the building of his organ at the Yarloop Workshops. It obviously helps if you have 50 odd years of collecting those bits. The casework was made at the Workshops and the biggest pipes came from the original organ at St George's Cathedral.

On average, an organ will take 18 months to finish, but John reckons he's spent some hundreds or hours on his latest project.

"It's ongoing. I just looked around to see what I have among the junk that's spread out all over the town.

"The style of that will be a theatre or English concert hall organ. They're very symphonic."

Old School

John isn't a fan of the latest technology of digital organs. Digital or virtual organs use a repertoire of recorded sounds from their mechanical cousins.

"They record pipes one by one, then a computer sorts them and you can recall those sounds."

"Some of them of very good, says John, in a tone of voice that leaves no doubt as to how good he feels that is.

"I'm biased," he laughs. "They are subject to ever-changing technology and there ends up being something quite plastic about them.

"The ear is not fooled. You need certain imperfections which you get with the real organ.